


Not an Advantage

by 221b_hound



Series: Captains of Industry [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Hipsters, Angst with a Happy Ending, Biker Lestrade, Caring, Cats, Death of a pet, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Melbourne, Pets, Tailor Mycroft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5172353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg and Mycroft used to have a cat. Her name was Gladstone for about a week, and then it was Dame Snooty McFluffy Bum, or Snoots, and she was theirs (and they hers) for 12 fabulous years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not an Advantage

**Author's Note:**

> In memory of my beloved Petra, who was ours, and we hers, for 12 fabulous years.

When Mycroft and Greg first moved in together, they got a cat. She was black with a white bib and a small white moustache and even as a kitten she was regal. Greg named her Gladstone - his Mycroft had four biographies of the bloke, so it seemed a good bet - but she soon shed that name in favour of Dame Snooty McFluffy Bum, or Snoots for short.

Among her many fine and funny habits were the way she would deposit her mangled toy mice, made of fake fur and feathers, into her food bowl, as though proudly displaying her mighty hunting skills. Also, she would stand on Greg's stomach and chest and block the view of the exciting bits when he watched Doctor Who, and lie in the middle of their games of Scrabble (for a score of 100, Mycroft always said) so as to be rightly the centre of attention, and she would lie between her humans on the couch or in their bed, upside down, purring, with her legs in the air, paws flexing, while they both scratched her tummy.

There were those few but hilarious occasions of what Greg called _Cattus Interuptus_ , when she mistook her humans’ amorous activities for a game, and leapt onto a moving blanket or bare body parts to swat and run, more than willing to be part of the entertainment. (They learned to close the door after the third time.)

At all their parties, including the famous Halloween affairs, Snoots would inspect each guest as though bestowing a Royal Favour, suprevising the revelry and occasionally deign to be patted by someone other than her two Chosen Ones. 

She was an indoor cat for the most part, out of deference for the safety of the local fauna, but she had a little cat run Greg had built for her in their small back yard. Snoots would lie in sunbeams and give birds large and small a speculative though impotent glare. Sometimes the queenly cat abandoned her dignity entirely if a moth foolishly came within swatting distance, and she's gambol about, swatting like a knight of the realm until the foe was vanquished. 

When Greg had a minor accident on his bike and spent a week laid up with a badly bruised and swollen ankle, Snoots slept curled up against his waist and attempted to wash the stupid big kitten's unshaven jaw, which made both him and Mycroft laugh.

When Mycroft's father would call in the early days, demanding he “abandon that gold-digging rent boy” and return to England, Snoots would clamber into Mycroft's lap, purr and rub his face with her own until Mycroft laughed into her soft fur.

When they sat up in bed at night, Mycroft reading aloud to Greg – they’d worked through innumerable classics and all seven of the Harry Potter books this way - Dame Snooty McFluffy Bum, nee Gladstone, would settle on Mycroft’s lap, or Greg’s stomach, and listen to the pleasant, though to her nonsensical, drone of his voice. And when Greg was cooking, she would sit on the stool at the end of the bench and wait for her tribute – a piece of chicken, a dash of cream, a whole prawn.

Snoots was twelve when she died, in the middle of treatment for what they thought was a treatable digestive issue – lost in five too-swift days from kidney failure they never saw coming.

Greg cried for days. Mycroft never cried at all, Greg thought, until he came home a week later to find Mycroft kneeling and weeping soundlessly, crumpled over a mangled toy mouse. The one she used to leave in her bowl as proof of her hunting prowess.

Mycroft swore he'd never get another pet.

That was three years ago.

Today after running an errand, Greg comes into Captains of Industry with news and an idea.

'My friend Marg at the shelter says they have some gorgeous little cats in. I thought... Maybe it's time to get a kitten again.'

'Absolutely not.'

'Come on. It'll be lovely. We'll give a little fuzzball a new home. You know how much we loved Snoots.'

'I refuse to have another cat that I'll only get attached to and then outlive.'

'I know it's hard, My, but...'

'No. It's ridiculous to get attached. To love something and then watch it die and what's left? Memories all soured with the loss. Better not to make memories that will inevitably only hurt you later in the first place.'

Greg is very still. 'Is that how you'll feel about me?' he asks quietly.

'What?' Mycroft is taken aback. More. He is _shocked_.

'If I go first, will you think all this time we've had, you and me, all this love we have, will be spoiled? Soured? Will you wish you hadn’t made these memories?'

'Don't be ridiculous. It's not the same.'

'It's a bit the same.'

'And in any case, you will not die first.'

'So you want me to lose you instead and wish I'd never had these happy days? Because that's not what would happen, My. Even if you go first. I'll never regret a minute of our time. Even when it ends, this won't be spoiled. I won't let it be.'

'All lives end,' says Mycroft harshly, voice rough with emotion as he says the thing he once was told, 'All hearts are broken...'

'Yeah. That's true. But not all hearts live first. Not all hearts get to know love. Some just beat like it’s a dull job, and living's a chore, and never know joy or love, or what it is to _be_ loved.'

'Caring is not an advantage.' Mycroft is dubious, though, as if it’s an old saying he inherited and only now is wondering at its provenence.

'I call bullshit. Your dad’s bullshit at that. But do you know what it actually is? Caring?'

Mycroft stares at Greg and his eyes are glistening, because Mycroft is saying all these harsh things, but his heart is racing. What if Greg goes first? What if he loses this everyday joy? Will he regret having had it in his life? Will he think it spoiled and soured by loss, or will he be grateful that someone so beautiful ever loved him?

 _The latter_ , Mycroft thinks.  _Even if I end up alone, it would be infintitely lonelier to have never known him; known this. I will forever be made warm by the fact that Greg loved me._

Mycroft has not admitted it, but he thinks of Snoots all the time, still. He thinks of her purring and wriggling around and playing with him as he flicked bits of string and shone the iniquitous red dot for her hunting pleasure, and how obvious it was she knew they were playing, with her excited little trills as she pounced. He thinks of how she sought one or other of them out when they were sick or distressed, and groom them like they were huge, sad, useless kittens. How she was a lovely, warm, happy presence in their lives, and how it hurt when she died, and how he missed her and how she was remarkable, in her own way.

'Mycroft,' says Greg softly, drawing his Mycroft out of his reverie, ' Do you know what caring is, even though we can lose the ones we love?'

'Caring is what makes the living worthwhile,' says Mycroft, 'I will never be sorry you were in my life, Greg. Not ever. Nor Snoots, come to that.'

Greg kisses Mycroft as gently as if Mycroft were a fragile thing and says, 'You will always be the best thing that ever happened to me. Whatever comes next, these memories we make together are worth it. And it's not exactly the same, but you know, I think it might be time to get another member of the household. Don't you think? Let's go give one of those poor little buggers a home.'

They go to the shelter. They don't choose a kitten. She chooses them - a tortoiseshell with bright eyes and a sprightly step. Bold and inquisitive, she dashes across the desk as the paperwork is completed to attack the pen, pounce on the papers, flip upside down for Greg to tickle her tummy and generally be a four-legged circus. She is immediately affectionate too, purring when Greg picks her up and licking his chin. When Mycroft reaches over to pet her, she clambers up his arm to his shoulder to head-bump his ear then perch like a parrot on his shoulder. Her little body is vibrating, she is purring so hard.

'Her ears are huge,' Greg laughs, 'That always means trouble'

The cat with the too-alert ears and exploratory streak scampers down Mycroft's waistcoat to his lap, play-attacks his fingers and chirrup-mews a self-satisfied declaration of sorts at Greg, who scratches her cheeks. She curls up in Mycroft's lap, washes her paws and face and settles in for a nap.

'We'll call her Amelia Earhart,' says Mycroft, scratching her between the ears and not minding one bit about the cat hairs on his suit. 'She was a great adventurer as well.'

And though they did not live forever, Greg and Mycroft and (as she came to be called) Amelia Airhead did live happily together and made wonderful memories for ever such a good, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Petra with her too-big ears that meant trouble.


End file.
